Description
After reviewing farmers during the Great Depression and the relative success of President Roosevelt’s New Deal, you now turn your attention to criticism of the New Deal. The purpose of this exercise is to acquaint you with alternative proposals to provide assistance to needy Americans. It is an example of how Americans have the right and freedom to challenge national leaders and their policies. This unit’s assignment will build your abilities in comprehending competing economic plans, make informed analyses, and appreciate the rights Americans possess to be critical of their public leaders. TasksThere are two parts to this assignment. Essay: After reading Chapters 25 and 26, read the excerpts of the Long, Townsend, and Sinclair proposals included on the Thinking About Your New Deal Essay page. Write an essay that answers the following question: What made the Long, Townsend, and Sinclair proposals attractive to Americans who wanted additional assistance for the needy and why? Your essay should be at least 3 pages (of at least 5 paragraphs), use 12 point Times New Roman font, and be double-spaced. Use only the sources provided and be sure to cite all quotations. Leave time to submit your essay to Tutors for feedback/review, which may help improve your grade.PART 2 ON ANOTHER PAGE. WRITE A reflection on what you’ve learned during this unit and through the process of writing your essay. Explain what you understand now that you didn’t before. Have your views changed because of this? Why or why not?
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Chapter 25 | Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? The Great Depression, 1929-1932
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CHAPTER 25
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
The Great Depression, 1929-1932
Figure 25.1 In 1935, American photographer Berenice Abbott photographed these shanties, which the unemployed
in Lower Manhattan built during the depths of the Great Depression. (credit: modification of work by Works Progress
Administration)
Chapter Outline
25.1 The Stock Market Crash of 1929
25.2 President Hoover’s Response
25.3 The Depths of the Great Depression
25.4 Assessing the Hoover Years on the Eve of the New Deal
Introduction
On March 4, 1929, at his presidential inauguration, Herbert Hoover stated, “I have no fears for the
future of our country. It is bright with hope.” Most Americans shared his optimism. They believed
that the prosperity of the 1920s would continue, and that the country was moving closer to a land of
abundance for all. Little could Hoover imagine that barely a year into his presidency, shantytowns known
as “Hoovervilles” would emerge on the fringes of most major cities (Figure 25.1), newspapers covering
the homeless would be called “Hoover blankets,” and pants pockets, turned inside-out to show their
emptiness, would become “Hoover flags.”
The stock market crash of October 1929 set the Great Depression into motion, but other factors were at
the root of the problem, propelled onward by a series of both human-made and natural catastrophes.
Anticipating a short downturn and living under an ethos of free enterprise and individualism, Americans
suffered mightily in the first years of the Depression. As conditions worsened and the government failed
to act, they grew increasingly desperate for change. While Hoover could not be blamed for the Great
Depression, his failure to address the nation’s hardships would remain his legacy.
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25.1 The Stock Market Crash of 1929
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Identify the causes of the stock market crash of 1929
• Assess the underlying weaknesses in the economy that resulted in America’s spiraling
from prosperity to depression so quickly
• Explain how a stock market crash might contribute to a nationwide economic disaster
Herbert Hoover became president at a time of ongoing prosperity in the country. Americans hoped he
would continue to lead the country through still more economic growth, and neither he nor the country
was ready for the unraveling that followed. But Hoover’s moderate policies, based upon a strongly held
belief in the spirit of American individualism, were not enough to stem the ever-growing problems, and
the economy slipped further and further into the Great Depression.
While it is misleading to view the stock market crash of 1929 as the sole cause of the Great Depression,
the dramatic events of that October did play a role in the downward spiral of the American economy. The
crash, which took place less than a year after Hoover was inaugurated, was the most extreme sign of the
economy’s weakness. Multiple factors contributed to the crash, which in turn caused a consumer panic
that drove the economy even further downhill, in ways that neither Hoover nor the financial industry was
able to restrain. Hoover, like many others at the time, thought and hoped that the country would right
itself with limited government intervention. This was not the case, however, and millions of Americans
sank into grinding poverty.
Figure 25.2 (credit “courthouse”: modification of work by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
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THE EARLY DAYS OF HOOVER’S PRESIDENCY
Upon his inauguration, President Hoover set forth an agenda that he hoped would continue the “Coolidge
prosperity” of the previous administration. While accepting the Republican Party’s presidential
nomination in 1928, Hoover commented, “Given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last
eight years, we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished
from this nation forever.” In the spirit of normalcy that defined the Republican ascendancy of the 1920s,
Hoover planned to immediately overhaul federal regulations with the intention of allowing the nation’s
economy to grow unfettered by any controls. The role of the government, he contended, should be to create
a partnership with the American people, in which the latter would rise (or fall) on their own merits and
abilities. He felt the less government intervention in their lives, the better.
Yet, to listen to Hoover’s later reflections on Franklin Roosevelt’s first term in office, one could easily
mistake his vision for America for the one held by his successor. Speaking in 1936 before an audience in
Denver, Colorado, he acknowledged that it was always his intent as president to ensure “a nation built
of home owners and farm owners. We want to see more and more of them insured against death and
accident, unemployment and old age,” he declared. “We want them all secure.” [1] Such humanitarianism
was not uncommon to Hoover. Throughout his early career in public service, he was committed to
relief for people around the world. In 1900, he coordinated relief efforts for foreign nationals trapped
in China during the Boxer Rebellion. At the outset of World War I, he led the food relief effort in
Europe, specifically helping millions of Belgians who faced German forces. President Woodrow Wilson
subsequently appointed him head of the U.S. Food Administration to coordinate rationing efforts in
America as well as to secure essential food items for the Allied forces and citizens in Europe.
Hoover’s first months in office hinted at the reformist, humanitarian spirit that he had displayed
throughout his career. He continued the civil service reform of the early twentieth century by expanding
opportunities for employment throughout the federal government. In response to the Teapot Dome Affair,
which had occurred during the Harding administration, he invalidated several private oil leases on public
lands. He directed the Department of Justice, through its Bureau of Investigation, to crack down on
organized crime, resulting in the arrest and imprisonment of Al Capone. By the summer of 1929, he had
signed into law the creation of a Federal Farm Board to help farmers with government price supports,
expanded tax cuts across all income classes, and set aside federal funds to clean up slums in major
American cities. To directly assist several overlooked populations, he created the Veterans Administration
and expanded veterans’ hospitals, established the Federal Bureau of Prisons to oversee incarceration
conditions nationwide, and reorganized the Bureau of Indian Affairs to further protect Native Americans.
Just prior to the stock market crash, he even proposed the creation of an old-age pension program,
promising fifty dollars monthly to all Americans over the age of sixty-five—a proposal remarkably similar
to the social security benefit that would become a hallmark of Roosevelt’s subsequent New Deal programs.
As the summer of 1929 came to a close, Hoover remained a popular successor to Calvin “Silent Cal”
Coolidge, and all signs pointed to a highly successful administration.
THE GREAT CRASH
The promise of the Hoover administration was cut short when the stock market lost almost one-half its
value in the fall of 1929, plunging many Americans into financial ruin. However, as a singular event, the
stock market crash itself did not cause the Great Depression that followed. In fact, only approximately 10
percent of American households held stock investments and speculated in the market; yet nearly a third
would lose their lifelong savings and jobs in the ensuing depression. The connection between the crash
and the subsequent decade of hardship was complex, involving underlying weaknesses in the economy
that many policymakers had long ignored.
1. Herbert Hoover, address delivered in Denver, Colorado, 30 October 1936, compiled in Hoover,
Addresses Upon the American Road, 1933-1938 (New York, 1938), p. 216. This particular quotation is
frequently misidentified as part of Hoover’s inaugural address in 1932.
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Chapter 25 | Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? The Great Depression, 1929-1932
What Was the Crash?
To understand the crash, it is useful to address the decade that preceded it. The prosperous 1920s ushered
in a feeling of euphoria among middle-class and wealthy Americans, and people began to speculate on
wilder investments. The government was a willing partner in this endeavor: The Federal Reserve followed
a brief postwar recession in 1920–1921 with a policy of setting interest rates artificially low, as well as
easing the reserve requirements on the nation’s largest banks. As a result, the money supply in the
U.S. increased by nearly 60 percent, which convinced even more Americans of the safety of investing in
questionable schemes. They felt that prosperity was boundless and that extreme risks were likely tickets to
wealth. Named for Charles Ponzi, the original “Ponzi schemes” emerged early in the 1920s to encourage
novice investors to divert funds to unfounded ventures, which in reality simply used new investors’ funds
to pay off older investors as the schemes grew in size. Speculation, where investors purchased into highrisk schemes that they hoped would pay off quickly, became the norm. Several banks, including deposit
institutions that originally avoided investment loans, began to offer easy credit, allowing people to invest,
even when they lacked the money to do so. An example of this mindset was the Florida land boom of the
1920s: Real estate developers touted Florida as a tropical paradise and investors went all in, buying land
they had never seen with money they didn’t have and selling it for even higher prices.
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AMERICANA
Selling Optimism and Risk
Advertising offers a useful window into the popular perceptions and beliefs of an era. By seeing how
businesses were presenting their goods to consumers, it is possible to sense the hopes and aspirations
of people at that moment in history. Maybe companies are selling patriotism or pride in technological
advances. Maybe they are pushing idealized views of parenthood or safety. In the 1920s, advertisers
were selling opportunity and euphoria, further feeding the notions of many Americans that prosperity
would never end.
In the decade before the Great Depression, the optimism of the American public was seemingly
boundless. Advertisements from that era show large new cars, timesaving labor devices, and, of course,
land. This advertisement for California real estate illustrates how realtors in the West, much like the
ongoing Florida land boom, used a combination of the hard sell and easy credit (Figure 25.3). “Buy now!!”
the ad shouts. “You are sure to make money on these.” In great numbers, people did. With easy access
to credit and hard-pushing advertisements like this one, many felt that they could not afford to miss out
on such an opportunity. Unfortunately, overspeculation in California and hurricanes along the Gulf Coast
and in Florida conspired to burst this land bubble, and would-be millionaires were left with nothing but the
ads that once pulled them in.
Figure 25.3 This real estate advertisement from Los Angeles illustrates the hard-sell techniques and
easy credit offered to those who wished to buy in. Unfortunately, the opportunities being promoted with
these techniques were of little value, and many lost their investments. (credit: “army.arch”/Flickr)
The Florida land boom went bust in 1925–1926. A combination of negative press about the speculative
nature of the boom, IRS investigations into the questionable financial practices of several land brokers,
and a railroad embargo that limited the delivery of construction supplies into the region significantly
hampered investor interest. The subsequent Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 drove most land developers
into outright bankruptcy. However, speculation continued throughout the decade, this time in the stock
market. Buyers purchased stock “on margin”—buying for a small down payment with borrowed money,
with the intention of quickly selling at a much higher price before the remaining payment came
due—which worked well as long as prices continued to rise. Speculators were aided by retail stock
brokerage firms, which catered to average investors anxious to play the market but lacking direct ties to
investment banking houses or larger brokerage firms. When prices began to fluctuate in the summer of
1929, investors sought excuses to continue their speculation. When fluctuations turned to outright and
steady losses, everyone started to sell. As September began to unfold, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
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Chapter 25 | Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? The Great Depression, 1929-1932
peaked at a value of 381 points, or roughly ten times the stock market’s value, at the start of the 1920s.
Several warning signs portended the impending crash but went unheeded by Americans still giddy over
the potential fortunes that speculation might promise. A brief downturn in the market on September 18,
1929, raised questions among more-seasoned investment bankers, leading some to predict an end to high
stock values, but did little to stem the tide of investment. Even the collapse of the London Stock Exchange
on September 20 failed to fully curtail the optimism of American investors. However, when the New York
Stock Exchange lost 11 percent of its value on October 24—often referred to as “Black Thursday”—key
American investors sat up and took notice. In an effort to forestall a much-feared panic, leading banks,
including Chase National, National City, J.P. Morgan, and others, conspired to purchase large amounts of
blue chip stocks (including U.S. Steel) in order to keep the prices artificially high. Even that effort failed
in the growing wave of stock sales. Nevertheless, Hoover delivered a radio address on Friday in which he
assured the American people, “The fundamental business of the country . . . is on a sound and prosperous
basis.”
As newspapers across the country began to cover the story in earnest, investors anxiously awaited the
start of the following week. When the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost another 13 percent of its value
on Monday morning, many knew the end of stock market speculation was near. The evening before the
infamous crash was ominous. Jonathan Leonard, a newspaper reporter who regularly covered the stock
market beat, wrote of how Wall Street “lit up like a Christmas tree.” Brokers and businessmen who feared
the worst the next day crowded into restaurants and speakeasies (a place where alcoholic beverages were
illegally sold). After a night of heavy drinking, they retreated to nearby hotels or flop-houses (cheap
boarding houses), all of which were overbooked, and awaited sunrise. Children from nearby slums and
tenement districts played stickball in the streets of the financial district, using wads of ticker tape for
balls. Although they all awoke to newspapers filled with predictions of a financial turnaround, as well as
technical reasons why the decline might be short-lived, the crash on Tuesday morning, October 29, caught
few by surprise.
No one even heard the opening bell on Wall Street that day, as shouts of “Sell! Sell!” drowned it out. In the
first three minutes alone, nearly three million shares of stock, accounting for $2 million of wealth, changed
hands. The volume of Western Union telegrams tripled, and telephone lines could not meet the demand,
as investors sought any means available to dump their stock immediately. Rumors spread of investors
jumping from their office windows. Fistfights broke out on the trading floor, where one broker fainted
from physical exhaustion. Stock trades happened at such a furious pace that runners had nowhere to store
the trade slips, and so they resorted to stuffing them into trash cans. Although the stock exchange’s board
of governors briefly considered closing the exchange early, they subsequently chose to let the market run
its course, lest the American public panic even further at the thought of closure. When the final bell rang,
errand boys spent hours sweeping up tons of paper, tickertape, and sales slips. Among the more curious
finds in the rubbish were torn suit coats, crumpled eyeglasses, and one broker’s artificial leg. Outside a
nearby brokerage house, a policeman allegedly found a discarded birdcage with a live parrot squawking,
“More margin! More margin!”
On Black Tuesday, October 29, stock holders traded over sixteen million shares and lost over $14 billion
in wealth in a single day. To put this in context, a trading day of three million shares was considered a
busy day on the stock market. People unloaded their stock as quickly as they could, never minding the
loss. Banks, facing debt and seeking to protect their own assets, demanded payment for the loans they had
provided to individual investors. Those individuals who could not afford to pay found their stocks sold
immediately and their life savings wiped out in minutes, yet their debt to the bank still remained (Figure
25.4).
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Figure 25.4 October 29, 1929, or Black Tuesday, witnessed thousands of people racing to Wall Street discount
brokerages and markets to sell their stocks. Prices plummeted throughout the day, eventually leading to a complete
stock market crash.
The financial outcome of the crash was devastating. Between September 1 and November 30, 1929, the
stock market lost over one-half its value, dropping from $64 billion to approximately $30 billion. Any
effort to stem the tide was, as one historian noted, tantamount to bailing Niagara Falls with a bucket.
The crash affected many more than the relatively few Americans who invested in the stock market. While
only 10 percent of households had investments, over 90 percent of all banks had invested in the stock
market. Many banks failed due to their dwindling cash reserves. This was in part due to the Federal
Reserve lowering the limits of cash reserves that banks were traditionally required to hold in their vaults,
as well as the fact that many banks invested in the stock market themselves. Eventually, thousands of
banks closed their doors after losing all of their assets, leaving their customers penniless. While a few
savvy investors got out at the right time and eventually made fortunes buying up discarded stock, those
success stories were rare. Housewives who speculated with grocery money, bookkeepers who embezzled
company funds hoping to strike it rich and pay the funds back before getting caught, and bankers who
used customer deposits to follow speculative trends all lost. While the stock market crash was the trigger,
the lack of appropriate economic and banking safeguards, along with a public psyche that pursued wealth
and prosperity at all costs, allowed this event to spiral downward into a depression.
Click and Explore
The National Humanities Center (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/crash) has brought
together a selection of newspaper commentary from the 1920s, from before the crash
to its aftermath. Read through to see what journalists and financial analysts thought of
the situation at the time.
Causes of the Crash
The crash of 1929 did not occur in a vacuum, nor did it cause the Great Depression. Rather, it was
a tipping point where the underlying weaknesses in the economy, specifically in the nation’s banking
system, came to the fore. It also represented both the end of an era characterized by blind faith in American
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Chapter 25 | Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? The Great Depression, 1929-1932
exceptionalism and the beginning of one in which citizens began increasingly to question some longheld American values. A number of factors played a role in bringing the stock market to this point and
contributed to the downward trend in the market, which continued well into the 1930s. In addition to
the Federal Reserve’s questionable policies and misguided banking practices, three primary reasons for
the collapse of the stock market were international economic woes, poor income distribution, and the
psychology of public confidence.
After World War I, both America’s allies and the defeated nations of Germany and Austria contended
with disastrous economies. The Allies owed large amounts of money to U.S. banks, which had advanced
them money during the war effort. Unable to repay these debts, the Allies looked to reparations from
Germany and Austria to help. The economies of those countries, however, were struggling badly, and they
could not pay their reparations, despite the loans that the U.S. provided to assist with their payments. The
U.S. government refused to forgive these loans, and American banks were in the position of extending
additional private loans to foreign governments, who used them to repay their debts to the U.S.
government, essentially shifting their obligations to private banks. When other countries began to default
on this second wave of private bank loans, still more strain was placed on U.S. banks, which soon sought
to liquidate these loans at the first sign of a stock market crisis.
Poor income distribution among Americans compounded the problem. A strong stock market relies on
today’s buyers becoming tomorrow’s sellers, and therefore it must always have an influx of new buyers.
In the 1920s, this was not the case. Eighty percent of American families had virtually no savings, and only
one-half to 1 percent of Americans controlled over a third of the wealth. This scenario meant that there
were no new buyers coming into the marketplace, and nowhere for sellers to unload their stock as the
speculation came to a close. In addition, the vast majority of Americans with limited savings lost their
accounts as local banks closed, and likewise lost their jobs as investment in business and industry came to
a screeching halt.
Finally, one of the most important factors in the crash was the contagion effect of panic. For much of the
1920s, the public felt confident that prosperity would continue forever, and therefore, in a self-fulfilling
cycle, the market continued to grow. But once the panic began, it spread quickly and with the same cyclical
results; people were worried that the market was going down, they sold their stock, and the market
continued to drop. This was partly due to Americans’ inability to weather market volatility, given the
limited cash surpluses they had on hand, as well as their psychological concern that economic recovery
might never happen.
IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE CRASH
After the crash, Hoover announced that the economy was “fundamentally sound.” On the last day of
trading in 1929, the New York Stock Exchange held its annual wild and lavish party, complete with
confetti, musicians, and illegal alcohol. The U.S. Department of Labor predicted that 1930 would be
“a splendid employment year.” These sentiments were not as baseless as it may seem in hindsight.
Historically, markets cycled up and down, and periods of growth were often followed by downturns that
corrected themselves. But this time, there was no market correction; rather, the abrupt shock of the crash
was followed by an even more devastating depression. Investors, along with the general public, withdrew
their money from banks by the thousands, fearing the banks would go under. The more people pulled out
their money in bank runs, the closer the banks came to insolvency (Figure 25.5).
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Figure 25.5 As the financial markets collapsed, hurting the banks that had gambled with their holdings, people
began to fear that the money they had in the bank would be lost. This began bank runs across the country, a period
of still more panic, where people pulled their money out of banks to keep it hidden at home.
The contagion effect of the crash grew quickly. With investors losing billions of dollars, they invested
very little in new or expanded businesses. At this time, two industries had the greatest impact on the
country’s economic future in terms of investment, potential growth, and employment: automotive and
construction. After the crash, both were hit hard. In November 1929, fewer cars were built than in any
other month since November 1919. Even before the crash, widespread saturation of the market meant
that few Americans bought them, leading to a slowdown. Afterward, very few could afford them. By
1933, Stutz, Locomobile, Durant, Franklin, Deusenberg, and Pierce-Arrow automobiles, all luxury models,
were largely unavailable; production had ground to a halt. They would not be made again until 1949. In
construction, the drop-off was even more dramatic. It would be another thirty years before a new hotel or
theater was built in New York City. The Empire State Building itself stood half empty for years after being
completed in 1931.
The damage to major industries led to, and reflected, limited purchasing by both consumers and
businesses. Even those Americans who continued to make a modest income during the Great Depression
lost the drive for conspicuous consumption that they exhibited in the 1920s. People with less money to
buy goods could not help businesses grow; in turn, businesses with no market for their products could
not hire workers or purchase raw materials. Employers began to lay off workers. The country’s gross
national product declined by over 25 percent within a year, and wages and salaries declined by $4 billion.
Unemployment tripled, from 1.5 million at the end of 1929 to 4.5 million by the end of 1930. By mid-1930,
the slide into economic chaos had begun but was nowhere near complete.
THE NEW REALITY FOR AMERICANS
For most Americans, the crash affected daily life in myriad ways. In the immediate aftermath, there was
a run on the banks, where citizens took their money out, if they could get it, and hid their savings under
mattresses, in bookshelves, or anywhere else they felt was safe. Some went so far as to exchange their
dollars for gold and ship it out of the country. A number of banks failed outright, and others, in their
attempts to stay solvent, called in loans that people could not afford to repay. Working-class Americans
saw their wages drop: Even Henry Ford, the champion of a high minimum wage, began lowering wages by
as much as a dollar a day. Southern cotton planters paid workers only twenty cents for every one hundred
pounds of cotton picked, meaning that the strongest picker might earn sixty cents for a fourteen-hour day
of work. Cities struggled to collect property taxes and subsequently laid off teachers and police.
The new hardships that people faced were not always immediately apparent; many communities felt the
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Chapter 25 | Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? The Great Depression, 1929-1932
changes but could not necessarily look out their windows and see anything different. Men who lost their
jobs didn’t stand on street corners begging; they disappeared. They might be found keeping warm by
a trashcan bonfire or picking through garbage at dawn, but mostly, they stayed out of public view. As
the effects of the crash continued, however, the results became more evident. Those living in cities grew
accustomed to seeing long breadlines of unemployed men waiting for a meal (Figure 25.6). Companies
fired workers and tore down employee housing to avoid paying property taxes. The landscape of the
country had changed.
Figure 25.6 As the Great Depression set in, thousands of unemployed men lined up in cities around the country,
waiting for a free meal or a hot cup of coffee.
The hardships of the Great Depression threw family life into disarray. Both marriage and birth rates
declined in the decade after the crash. The most vulnerable members of society—children, women,
minorities, and the working class—struggled the most. Parents often sent children out to beg for food at
restaurants and stores to save themselves from the disgrace of begging. Many children dropped out of
school, and even fewer went to college. Childhood, as it had existed in the prosperous twenties, was over.
And yet, for many children living in rural areas where the affluence of the previous decade was not fully
developed, the Depression was not viewed as a great challenge. School continued. Play was simple and
enjoyed. Families adapted by growing more in gardens, canning, and preserving, wasting little food if any.
Home-sewn clothing became the norm as the decade progressed, as did creative methods of shoe repair
with cardboard soles. Yet, one always knew of stories of the “other” families who suffered more, including
those living in cardboard boxes or caves. By one estimate, as many as 200,000 children moved about the
country as vagrants due to familial disintegration.
Women’s lives, too, were profoundly affected. Some wives and mothers sought employment to make ends
meet, an undertaking that was often met with strong resistance from husbands and potential employers.
Many men derided and criticized women who worked, feeling that jobs should go to unemployed men.
Some campaigned to keep companies from hiring married women, and an increasing number of school
districts expanded the long-held practice of banning the hiring of married female teachers. Despite the
pushback, women entered the workforce in increasing numbers, from ten million at the start of the
Depression to nearly thirteen million by the end of the 1930s. This increase took place in spite of the
twenty-six states that passed a variety of laws to prohibit the employment of married women. Several
women found employment in the emerging pink collar occupations, viewed as traditional women’s work,
including jobs as telephone operators, social workers, and secretaries. Others took jobs as maids and
housecleaners, working for those fortunate few who had maintained their wealth.
White women’s forays into domestic service came at the expense of minority women, who had even fewer
employment options. Unsurprisingly, African American men and women experienced unemployment,
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and the grinding poverty that followed, at double and triple the rates of their white counterparts. By
1932, unemployment among African Americans reached near 50 percent. In rural areas, where large
numbers of African Americans continued to live despite the Great Migration of 1910–1930, depressionera life represented an intensified version of the poverty that they traditionally experienced. Subsistence
farming allowed many African Americans who lost either their land or jobs working for white landholders
to survive, but their hardships increased. Life for African Americans in urban settings was equally
trying, with blacks and working-class whites living in close proximity and competing for scarce jobs and
resources.
Life for all rural Americans was difficult. Farmers largely did not experience the widespread prosperity
of the 1920s. Although continued advancements in farming techniques and agricultural machinery led to
increased agricultural production, decreasing demand (particularly in the previous markets created by
World War I) steadily drove down commodity prices. As a result, farmers could barely pay the debt they
owed on machinery and land mortgages, and even then could do so only as a result of generous lines of
credit from banks. While factory workers may have lost their jobs and savings in the crash, many farmers
also lost their homes, due to the thousands of farm foreclosures sought by desperate bankers. Between
1930 and 1935, nearly 750,000 family farms disappeared through foreclosure or bankruptcy. Even for those
who managed to keep their farms, there was little market for their crops. Unemployed workers had less
money to spend on food, and when they did purchase goods, the market excess had driven prices so low
that farmers could barely piece together a living. A now-famous example of the farmer’s plight is that,
